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Rachael Schupak
Dr. Perkins
18 October 2014
Week of 10/15
Reflective Journal #3
Its been about a month since I started observing Mrs. Os kindergarden class. In such a
short amount of time, I have learned so much from her. Being in her class has really opened my
eyes on how important it is for children to learn phonics at their age. Mrs. O always explains to
me before the class starts what she hopes to accomplish for the day. However, like she has told
me before, she has to be very flexible because the children may not listen or may take longer on
an activity than planned.
This past week, one of the highlights of this class was helping the children write in their
journals. Last Monday, the children went on a feild trip to Duffields tp pick pumpkins. This
week in their journal, they were given the sentence, My pumpkin is and then a blank space is
provided. In that blank space, the children were assigned to write a word that would describe
their pumpkin. Mrs. O assigned me to help two certain tables along with the child I am
observing. One of the first children I helped out wanted to write big. I helped sound out the
letters for him and he was able to spell the word correctly. Something intereting I came across
while observing all the childrens work was that some children wrote cute as qut. The
children who did this obviously confused the c sound with the qu sound, and did not have
the knowledge to put the e at the end of the word. The child that I am observing wanted to
write a jack-o-lantern. He has a very creative imagination and I was very impressed that he
was able to get all the letters in the word except for k. However, when he ran out of room on

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the line provided, he started writing his letters out of order under the line. Based on this weeks
lesson and activity, I believe that Mrs. O is using content knowledge to build meaningful
curriculum. This is the fifth standard of professionalism. She demonstrates this since she is
teaching her children phonics, reading, writing and literacy.
As I observe Mrs. O teach, I realize how she incorportaes using all different teaching
styles in order to connect with the children. When she is teaching lessons on vocabulary, for
example, I notice how she applies to all types of learners. For visual learners, she physically
points to the word. For verbal learners, she will sound out the word and then read it aloud. For
kinestetic learners, she always has some sort of worksheet or activity planned in order to learn
about the word. I find her tecniques both very appealing and useful.
Overall, this week was another amazing opprotunity for me to observe the kindergarden
classroom. I know that I am learning something new everytime I go. I think I say this every
week, but only because it is so true! I love helping the children learn every week. I love when
the teacher asks me to get involved because I feel like it heightens the experience so much more.
I am looking forward to next week because the children will have art class and it is always so
interesting to see the crafts that the children make. The children love to show me the work that
theyve done and I always make sure to compliment their work.

Source:

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Morrison, George S. Fundamentals of Early Childhood Education. 7th ed. N.p.:

Pearson Education, 2014. Print.